Meadow Flowers and Serendipity
Lovely documentary about wild flowers and meadows called Bees, Butterflies and Blooms from Sarah Raven on BBC 2 last night. I tuned into it by chance but it was just the tonic for a cold, damp, wintry evening, ahead the snow outside at the moment. There were lots of shots of gorgeous meadow flowers and various good-hearted people campaigning to see a return to more environmentally friendly growing methods, so fields and commons end up looking more like this
It was day of co-incidences, actually. Earlier in the week, foolishly perhaps, I started clearing out my bookshelves and, aside from ending up with more books on the floor that in the shelf, I rediscovered a review copy of Sarah’s latest book about native flowers called, simply, Wild Flowers. It is a magnificent labour of love, with superb images and – this is not meant to be demeaning – makes for rather good bedtime reading if you don’t mind a couple of hundred pages in hardback resting on your knees. There is something about the calm order of reference books such as this, as well as Larousse Gastonomique, various dictionaries for editing purposes and, heavens, OS maps, that sends me off to sleep very happily indeed.
In a continuation of the serendipity/zeitgeist/talk-of-the-town theme, at work earlier today, soon after chatting about Nina Campbell and the eye-catching designs from St Jude’s (and particularly Angie Lewin), press releases from both their publicity operations plopped into my mailbox. Prefer not to think about it too much.
[Top image taken from a tent during a wonderful camping weekend at Botelet Farm, in Cornwall; middle on my walk to work one day (typically, I was late); and bottom in the fields around Darwin's home, Down House, in Kent.]
Cows and Hogs
A few posts ago I uploaded a shot of a dried umbellifer and a clever soul asked if the plant was cow parsley or hogweed. Interested (but clueless) myself, I searched through my files and found this picture of said umbellifer in early summer…well, it’s not the exact plant but it was growing in the same spot, so I am sure it counts…
I am sure the owner of the garden couldn’t possibly have hogweed in her patch, even if this was growing beside a little stream. As a bit of a smart Alec To be certain, I dug out an old copy of Wild Flowers of Britain and Northern Europe, which I gather has been a favoured pocket guide ever since it was published by Collins in 1974.
Shouldn’t have done that…do you know how many types of white umbellifer there are? Dozens, I tell you. Quite simply, dozens, and I am afraid I am barely any wiser. So, any suggestions? Could it be lesser water parsnip? Fool’s watercress, wild celery or even fine-leaved dropwort?
Oh blimey…Angelica? Or even hemlock? Impossible!
Pignuts, shepherd’s needle and moon carrot…
And, last page…or, first page, actually. Realise I’ve uploaded these in the wrong order.
Am intrigued to see that caraway and coriander count as wild flowers. Coriander appears to be native to southern Europe which makes me wonder if it was introduced to England by the Romans, along with central heating, straight roads and the cultivated apple. Or was it brought over in early European trade? These days it seems to be used almost exclusively in Asian and Middle Eastern cooking but it would be interesting to find out if there were any Tudor recipes that called for coriander – either fresh or dried.
But I digress. Hogweed, cow parsley or hemlock?
Plants for Rain
Something lovely from Christmas in Suffolk:
Once (years ago, of course) in a feature about plants that are attractive to bees, I mistakenly referred to umbellifers as umbrellifers. The error dawned on me the night after I’d submitted the piece. In mild panic I rang the editor the next morning but it was too late. The piece was for a weekend paper and it had already gone off to press.
Still, looking at these woody spokes revealed by wind and ice, it’s not a wholly inaccurate term, is it?
Here and now
One of the curious things about writing for magazines, as I do, is that you will inevitably experience a kind of virtual life three or four months before the fact, in order to accommodate print production schedules. This means that in summer, while kith and kin are ensconced in one of these, gin and tonic in hand, in our heads we magazine writers will already be celebrating the perfect Christmas, complete with happy families, a magical tree and the gifts you’ve always wanted.
I was reminded of this yesterday afternoon when, on a rare weekend at home, I walked through the fields that surround the village in which I live. The birds were out in force and some time over the past fortnight blossom had appeared, as had daffodils, hyacinths, muscari and forsythia. ‘So this is what spring is really like,’ I said to myself, absurdly pleased about being outdoors without a coat and feeling real warmth on my shoulders.
Some months ago, around Christmas in fact, as snow blew down from the north (and the east and the west), flights were grounded and any excursion outdoors involved warming a cold bottom against the Aga – ok, ok, the radiator – I had imagined everything about yesterday and, indeed, had yearned for it. In my head I’d inhaled the scent of washing dried on the line, heard the robin, sentinel on a bough of hawthorn springing into leaf, felt the twitch of fingers aching for an allotment and had ridden a step-through bike from the most beautiful bike shop in Great Britain. It had worked. My work looked fine. But there is nothing like the real thing; nothing quite like proper sunshine on your shoulders.
Of course the demands of work mean that June and July are already here but for this season, this spring, twee though it may sound, I shall endeavour practise the pleasure of being in the moment. No longing; no wishing to be anywhere else; here is good.
* I had nothing to do with this image but use it courtesy of the International Bulb Flower Centre, a collective body that was established in 1925 to promote Dutch bulbs around the world. If you are thinking of growing a few bulbs yourself, do have a look.
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